Premise: Things are finally looking up for Sebastian. He and Tyson have landed their first real start up client for their marketing agency, and now they look forward to meeting the new hires. But Sebastian would never in a million years guess that the new Lead Web Developer would be his ex-wife.
Episode one:
A failed marriage.
Weight gain.
Unhealthy lifestyle.
Sebastian could go on and on about the negative things that have happened to him in the last year. Life sucked.
Why waste another day, hour or minute living…
He never thought of doing “that”, but there have been times he wanted to lie in bed all day. If Sebastian never saw the sun again, that wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen.
But if he did that, he and Tyson wouldn’t be standing in their very own office. The one positive thing to happen.
“It’s about time we’ve got our own place. No more apartment work.” Tyson said.
They stood with their heads high and hands in their pockets. They’ve been in business for about a year and a half. Recently they landed their first “real” client. A startup company that created mobile games. The company wanted to go all in with their ideas and they set aside a huge marketing budget.
That’s where Sebastian and Tyson come in.
Sebastian was the copy-writer. His job consisted of persuading the hell out of people. Try to sell the next flappy bird through email, landing pages, etc.
Tyson handled the face-to-face meetings and kept the clients happy. He also loved crunching numbers — an analytical mind.
Until now, they’ve been doing everything themselves for small mom and pop companies. Now they’ve entered the big leagues. The time came to make some hires. Another thing Tyson excelled at.
“Bet you never thought we’d have our own employees, huh?” Tyson asked.
Being a boss terrified Sebastian. He swallowed.
Tyson noticed. “You’re nervous.”
“It’s just… you know — that kind of stuff ain’t my thing. That’s why I had you do all the hiring. I guess I didn’t give much thought until now how all these recent hires will look at me as a leader. It will take some getting used to.”
Tyson patted Sebastian on the back.
“You’ll be fine, bud.” Tyson said. “You always sell yourself short. We wouldn’t be where we’re at now without the skills you contributed.”
And with that Tyson moved off, heading to his office. He was right. The constant worrying would come to an end. Sebastian could use this to turn his life around. No more looking for a pity party or looking for handouts. Life gave him a chance to start new.
Besides, how hard would it be to lead a group of employees?
____
They were all so young. What the hell was Tyson thinking? Sebastian examined them as they settled into their desks. He greeted them at the door earlier and talked to a few of them. Sebastian was 26, but talking to them, standing amongst them, he felt old.
Ancient.
His assistant, Dale, the 19 years old, spent one year in college before dropping out. He said the experience took too much brain power and time.
What did he think work would be like? And he’s supposed to assist me!
Then there was Audrey. Sebastian felt his cheeks warming up.
Snap out of it!
She was 19 and didn’t even go to college. She would be the social media manager. Did she know what she was doing?
Audrey had this school girl, innocent vibe about her — it would affect a man’s thinking - Tyson's thinking.
This wasn’t like Tyson at all to make choices like this, but they came this far trusting each other.
“Hello, sir?” Dale poked his head into Sebastian’s office. “Is this desk right here going to be mine?”
He pointed at the desk resting on the other side of the glass wall.
Sebastian nodded.
“Perfect,” he set his things down, entered the office, reached out his hand. “I didn’t get to say it earlier in front of everyone, but I look forward to assisting you, and learning as much as I could.”
Sebastian shook his hand.
“And I look forward to teaching, Dale. Do you have any experience at all with copy-writing?”
“No,”
“Okay… Do you know what a copy-writer is?”
“Is it alright if I am honest? I didn’t know what that meant before the interview.”
“Well, what did you think you were applying for?”
“I saw that it was a marketing agency, and saw the word writer, so I figured I’d be writing a couple articles here and there.”
“That’s a content writer,”
“Yes. Tyson informed me of that… during the interview. But he looked over some of my work and -”
“Give me one second... I gotta go talk to Tyson.”
“Please, sir,” Dale said. “I need this job and I’m a fast learner, I promise.”
“I’m sure you are. Just um, don’t worry. You’re fine.”
Sebastian exited his office and made his way to Tyson, but Audrey popped up out of nowhere.
“Good morning!”
“Uh, good… morning.”
Keep your eyes up.
He didn’t remember her cleavage bulging out earlier. She must know what she’s doing, yet she stood there with glistening eyes, hands cupped in front of her.
Now Sebastian felt like a pervert.
“I didn’t get a chance to get to know you, when you talked to us earlier… kinda wanted to introduce myself a little more.” Audrey said.
“I’m headed to Tyson’s office but we can talk later.”
“I’ll walk with you!”
“You don’t have to do that,”
“It’s okay, I don’t mind.”
They started walking. Well, Sebastian walked… Audrey skipped. Which would have been fine if it wasn’t for the unhooked button on her blouse.
“So, this is like my first ever actual job,” she started. “I don’t really know how things work in offices, other than what I’ve seen on shows and read in books. It’s kind of embarrassing. But anyway, I try to be a friendly person and I want to be friends with everybody here at the office. Even the boss…”
“That’s good. We want a friendly environment here, so that’s perfect. We can use more people like you not only in the office but also in the world.”
“Wow, aren’t you philosophical? I like that.”
Sebastian smiled and glanced down at her.
Oh, boy.
He stopped, and she followed suit.
“Um, I hope I’m not overstepping, but you might want to, uh…”
Sebastian acted like he had an unhooked button on his shirt, and with imagination hooked it back up. It looked stupid, but she got the point. Audrey glanced down at her breast and blushed. She buttoned it up, and giggled.
“Is that why you were blushing the entire time?”
“What? No... I wasn’t blushing. I wasn’t even staring or anything-”
“I’m kidding,”
The moment became awkward. Sebastian swallowed hard.
What’s with this girl?
“I take jokes too far.” She gives a cute smile. “Sorry,”
“It’s fine,” Sebastian fidgets and gives a smile.
“You’re the jittery type, huh?”
“Okay, let’s talk about you…” He steered the conversation away from his awkward social skills. “You said you didn’t go to college earlier… What highschool did you graduate from?”
“I got my GED from the community college down the road from my house.”
“Really?”
What the hell, Tyson?!
“I imagine being young and all, you got a lot of experience with social media managing, huh?”
“Just with my stuff,”
Tyson was walking back into his office from the break room.
“Tyson!” Sebastian yelled out.
The entire office went silent. Audrey squinted as she got the brunt of the yell. Sebastian apologized to her and excused himself.
___
Once they got into the office, Sebastian closed the door behind him. Tyson sat at his desk and took a sip of his coffee.
“You didn’t tell me you were hiring high school musical,”
Tyson chuckled, “What?”
Sebastian gestured to outside the office, but Tyson still wasn’t following.
“Everybody out there just graduated highschool,”
“That’s a bit of an exaggeration, Seb.”
“Is it? My point is everyone out there is younger than us!”
“And that’s a problem?”
“C’mon you know what I mean. I thought the people we hired would be our age or older. Maybe two 19-year-olds here and there… What I’m trying to get at is, where are the credentials? Almost everyone I talked to dropped out of college. What experience do they have?”
“To be fair, you’re a college drop out too.”
“Yeah, but do you see what I had to do to get a job? I had to start my company earning peanuts because no one wanted to touch me without experience or a degree.”
“And I thought because of that, you of all people would welcome these guys.”
“I am. I just wasn’t expecting the entire staff to be like that.”
Tyson grinned. The grin that could calm storms.
“It’s gonna be alright, Seb. I promise. I wouldn’t have hired these people if I didn’t see something special.”
Sebastian nodded, then smiled. “What did you see special in Audrey?”
Tyson burst into laughter, “I’m gonna be honest, man. I don’t remember much about that. I know she was mad cute and very persuasive.”
“Yeah, I bet,”
They share a laugh again. Sebastian stared through the glass. The group of inexperienced people littered the open area. Sebastian and Tyson had their work cut out for them. But together they would overcome it like they’ve done with everything else.
“So did we really have nothing the experienced people wanted?” Sebastian asked. “Are we that bad?”
“There were a few that wanted the job, but the salary budget happened to be much lower than I thought. We can’t afford them. No degree and no experience comes a lot cheaper.”
Sebastian nodded in agreement. Tyson set his coffee cup down. A sigh escaped his lips..
“I got to tell you something, man. We hired one person with a degree, and a sizable chunk of the budget went to her… But I’m gonna need you to keep an open mind about this-”
“What the hell is she doing here!?”
Sebastian felt like the floor beneath him became the ocean, and he would lose his footing any second.
Why the hell is Valerie here?!
To Be Continued...
*Hope you guys enjoyed it. I have goals for this project, but it's still a little ways off, so I figured I share it with the Reddit community. Please let me know how you liked it. And I'd love to read things you've guys wrote.
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